America Loses Arab Popularity Contest

A new poll of six Arab nations (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Morocco) finds that, in most of the countries surveyed, "favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration." Greenwald opines:

In one sense, this is hardly surprising, given the escalating violence and bombing the U.S. is bringing to that region, its ongoing fealty to Israel, and the dead-ender support the American government gave to that region's besieged dictators. Though unsurprising, it's still remarkable. After all, one of the central promises of an Obama presidency was a re-making of America in the eyes of that part of the world, but the opposite is taking place.

Adam Serwer adds that "this is particularly bad given that part of the administration's underlying rationale for intervening in Libya was to shift the regional narrative that the U.S. only supports brutal dictators and not the democratic aspirations of Arabs."